benghazi. are those type of decisions usually handled in the state department? the white house usually does not know about that type of decision, do they? no, i disagree with you. the white house, the national security council under this president is well aware of the strategy, the posture that they want to take in a country or the region. this is a reflection of low profile, minimize our footprint and not provide the security that s needed. it s back fired on the president. you know, qaddafi has been dead for a year, we should have had 50 or 100 marines in there a day, a week, after qaddafi was killed to protect the embassy our cia operatives we had 12 to 20 operatives leave the country after ambassador stevens was killed they were only allowed to conduct surveillance. and jeremiah, why let me just drill down on that. why would they want to minimize our footprint? why just conduct surveillance?
vice president debate joe biden said the administration did not know about requests for additional security before the attack that killed four americans in benghazi. we weren t told they wanted more security there. we did not know they wanted more security. and, by the way, at the time we were told exactly we said exactly what the intelligence community told us. that they knew. here is what officials who were on the ground in libya officials in washington said just one day earlier. struggled to obtain additional personnel but was never able to obtain the numbers he felt comfortable with. the number that we continued to come up with, and it is generally the same number that was requested in march, at my first request, was approximately 12 armed
biden vs. sarah palin a few years ago. it was record-setting. it was close. do you think baseball got in the way. it could have been baseball. we start with the latest that came out of that debate regarding the attack on benghazi and the killing of ambassador chris stevens and the back and forth between the state department, the intelligence community and the white house with everyone looking to cast blame on somebody else. here is what vice president biden claimed was part of the problem. this lecture on embassy security. this congressman cut embassy security in his budget by $300 million below what we asked for number one. so much for the embassy security piece. by the way the the washington post fact checking on that they say that is not accurate that, in fact, the republic budget cut all nondefense discretionary spending which falls under by 19%. the vice president is
exactly what the intelligence community provided us. clearly we need to hear from someone from the cia how much does the public need to know? we are not going to know it after the interestingly what eflerged that hearing wednesday shirley lamb who works at the department rejected the request for more security? libya. they say though because it was requested for tripoli, not benghazi. so the security wouldn t have gone there. there is all of this finger pointing this morning as to who rejected security. wanted more security. whose department is to blame. i don t know, there is a lot of blame to go around. we have a lot of guests coming up, mike huckabee, dick morris, talk about what went on here. mitt romney is riding the wave of momentum after both of these debates the presidential and vice presidential debate.
on that paperwork she said know to had to deal with tripoli not benghazi. at issue, of course, is the benghazi raid. they can get away with saying, i guess, or in their mind they can get away with saying we didn t authorize extra security but that security was tailored for tripoli. here is what is also securous and it came out during the oversight. they testified when they asked for more security and when it was denied, they did get an increase in pay. they got more. hazard pay. hazard pay. got more hardship pay because they t. was recognized they were in a dangerous area. it can t be the budget they increased their pay but wouldn t give them the additional security personnel armed that they were asking for. so this budget, it has been suggested, that the whole budget issue b. benghazi is a red herring. dick cheney the former vice president entering this whole debate basically saying on the sean hannity program that you can t have it both ways when it comes to using the